Craig has been writing and blogging since 2008, and his love for technology goes back much further. Aside from his deep and passionate love for writing and playing around with gadgets, he enjoys watching/playing baseball and getting his hands dirty with DIY projects.

In a world that is changing so rapidly, we tend to think of a gadget as “old” after a year or so when something better comes along. It’s a rare occurrence when you see someone still using an HTC DROID Incredible (my first-ever smartphone) or a laptop from the Windows XP days, but it got me thinking about how many people out there still use old technology on a daily basis. While you could technically count a microwave (for which my parents still have the same one after 20 years), my focus is aimed at consumer electronics, like phones, laptops, TVs, speakers, etc.

The Chromecast was arguably one of the most talked-about new products that was revealed by Google earlier this week. The new Nexus 7 and Android 4.3 were cool and all, but the Chromecast definitely got most of the attention, and it’s easy to see why: it’s a media streaming device the size of a dongle, and it only costs $35 ($11 after the 3-month Netflix discount, which has since been discontinued). However, after playing around with it for a little while, I’ve noticed that it’s an awesome device for some people, and an awful device for others.

A lot of gadgets have passed through the halls of iFixit, getting their turn on the chopping block and having their internal guts dissected. Some of them have been extremely difficult to open up, while others are pretty easy. The Chromecast, on the other hand, is just a piece of nothing if you ask the iFixit folks. They didn't even give it a repairability score.

Google's new Nexus 7 was released a bit prematurely today, as retailers like Best Buy and Amazon put the new tablet on sale. First it was Best Buy, and then more and more retailers piled on, offering the new Nexus 7 days before Google would put it up for sale. However, it seems Google is pulling the plug on their originally plans of a July 30 launch, and are selling the tablet right now.

Remember Google Babel? It was the rumored name of what is now called the rebranded Google+ Hangouts. However, Project Babel still exists, and it deals with language translation. Google is working to turn phones into "universal translators" of sorts, so when you talk into the phone in one language, the person you're calling will hear a real-time translation in their native language.

While manual transmissions are a lot better than automatics, many people still don't know how to drive them. However, whether you're a youngster with a learning permit, or are just starting out on a manual transmission, Ford wants to make the learning process a bit easier, with a new shift knob that tells you when to shift based on haptic feedback.

We saw a lot of new features during the unveiling of Android 4.3 Jelly Bean earlier this week, including multi-user account support with restricted profiles, as well as Google Play Games, which is Google's version of Apple's Game Center. However, there's a new feature installed as well called Apps Ops, which is an app permission manager.

The MacBook Air has already seen its glory day with a Haswell upgrade last month at WWDC 2013, but the MacBook Pro was disappointingly skipped over and still has yet to get the new chips. However, it's reported that we may see new MacBook Pros come our way in October during Apple's annual fall event.

As scheduled, AT&T and Nokia have launched the Lumia 1020 this morning on AT&T's website. It currently lists the device as only being available online, but the phone will be available in AT&T stores later today. The 1020 is Nokia's latest flagship smartphone, sporting a 41-megapixel camera as its main feature.

It's no surprise that Android runs on all sorts of different resolutions, including small smartwatch displays, all the way up to the Nexus 10's better-than-Retina-quality screen. However, we could see Android devices in the future rocking 4K resolutions, thanks to an interesting piece of source code in Android 4.3.

Google's refreshed Nexus 7 isn't supposed to officially land in stores until next week on July 30, but it seems Best Buy is jumping the gun yet again and now has both the 16GB and 32GB versions of the second-generation Nexus 7 available for purchase. Let's just hope the listing don't get taken down like they were with the pre-orders.

Right when you thought this whole NSA and PRISM debacle was just slightly slowing down a bit, things are picking back up, thanks to a new report. According to multiple anonymous sources, it's said that federal government officials are demanding websites to hand over user passwords in order to monitor individual users even more.